This record is a surprise to me.

I didn't think I was making an album until it was almost finished.

In Feb 2010, I booked our studio (The Bathouse), and our engineer, Aaron Holmberg, for a few days, with the intention of experimenting a little.

I started with a couple of songs, Shattered Down and If I Were You, that I'd been tinkering with in my basement. For those 2 tunes, I'd already recorded the guitar and bass at home over a drum machine, and I wanted to see if I could play real drums over all of it, ideally replacing the electronic drums.

Aaron looped the song for me, (so it would start again once it reached the end), and pushed the record button. This allowed me to go over the previous take each time, giving me a few runs at practicing a drum part. When I (finally) played a take that I thought was close to right, I'd keep it.

At the time, If I'd have thought that I was making an album, I'd have phoned up our drummer, Johnny, to ask him if he would help me out. I also might have looked at putting a band together to record the songs. The problem with all that was that i didn't really have finished songs, and I felt like I was just privately experimenting - laying this stuff down so I'd have it for future reference.

And I liked the whole process enough to keep going.

For the most of the rest of the songs on the album, I started with a guitar part, then put the bass and drums over it, and then I sang it.

There were 3 songs, (Cards, Confidences, and Things I Should've Said) where I played the acoustic guitar and sang them first, and then added the bass and drums after that.

I came out of that 1st session with 5 songs. I went in for 4 days in May and recorded a few more songs, using the same sorts of methods I'd used the 1st time. I then did one last 2-day session in September.

By the time I went in for those last couple of days of recording, I'd come to realize that I was actually trying to make a record, not just recording songs.

And I may have been the last to know.....
So, there you go - and there I go.
And now I find myself writing this.
And it is what it is -
it's more me, all the time.

-- Paul Langlois 

http://www.chingmusic.com/artists/Paul+Langlois/
https://twitter.com/chingmusic1
https://www.facebook.com/PaulLangloisMusic

Fix This Head

I've been friends with Jim for a bunch of years now.

We were a little ways into our friendship before I even realized Jim played guitar. Anyway, he pulled out a guitar one night and played me a song he'd written, called Apple Blossom - I was impressed (it ended up being the 1st song on his record).

As I heard more of his tunes over the next few years, and at countless campfires, I started saying 'Jim, we gotta get you into the studio and lay these tunes down'...
So, eventually, that's what we did!

In the fall of '08, we went into the Bathouse, and we started by starting.
We chipped away at it over the course of a couple/three weekends, here and there.

On the first weekend, Jim's wife Angie, his daughter Emily, and my wife Joanne each sang a duet with him. A couple of our other kids, his Katie, and my Sophie, also added some back-ups. Jim's brother Dave, a surprisingly subtle and tasteful harmonica player, was there most of the time over these weekends - playing along with Jim and his songs, like he's done most of their lives...

I asked Rob Baker to add some pedal steel on a couple of tunes - then I asked Gord Sinclair to add a little banjo. Another friend of mine, Mauro Sepe, came in one night and played some percussion on a couple of tracks. Aaron Holmberg, our resident engineer at the Bathouse, even made an appearance, with a back-up vocal on Devils and Diamonds...

So there you go! That's how it happened, and I hope you like it....
Paul

http://www.chingmusic.com/artists/Jim+Tidman/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jim-Tidman/149288843987

Buy at Maple Music

Stealing Ghosts

Everything We Were

Watching You

10. PL_EveryTime MM2 June30.25

02. PL_WrappedInABow MM 3 Oct5.25

03. PL_WhatchaWant RM1 Jan11.24

01_Hardly Holding On

02_ Wrapped In A Bow

10_MorningGuyNightGuy

09_There's Nothing Wrong

08_Construin'

07_When the Fish Are Gone

06_No Problem In The Daylight

05_Into The Night

04_How You Are

03_Is This What You Want

Kingston based singer/songwriter Greg Ball will release his sophomore album, 
Mr. Rightplace (Ching Music/Fontana North) on June 18, 2013. Recorded at The Bathhouse in Bath, Ontario, the album features 11 new tracks written by Ball and produced by Ching Music founder, Paul Langlois. Drawing from experiences of love and loss, Mr. Rightplace is a product of Ball’s growing confidence as a songwriter and showcases the tight-knit relationship with his band that includes multi-instrumentalist, Joe Carscallen, drummer Rob Radford and bassist Paul Müller.  

Website: www.gregball.ca 
Twitter: @gregball75
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Ball/204292579583367 
Youtube: www.youtube.com/gballyeah 



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